Lensmaster

The company "Lensmaster» (http://www.lensmaster.ru/) is by far the largest optical chain in Russia. It started its activities on the Russian market in 1998 with one of optics salons on Nicholskaya Street in Moscow. "Lensmaster" was the first to offer the Russian customers a full range of services - vision screening, selection of frames and lenses for glasses, production of glasses, sales of sunglasses and contact lenses.

The company "Lensmaster" was the first in Russia to deploy optical network brand, with its history, distinctive style and image, long-term development strategy, the innovative principles of management, staff recruitment and training, CRM and loyalty programs for customers. In 2010, "Lensmaster" joined the group of GrandVision companies , which is a global leader in optical retail.

Now Russia has about 100 "Lensmaster" stores: more than 50 stores in Moscow, more than 15 - in St. Petersburg, as well as optics salons in Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg, Rostov-on-Don, Yaroslavl, Novosibirsk, Samara , Omsk, Krasnodar, Ufa. The company's staff currently consists of more than a thousand employees.

Objectives

integration of information from different sources into a single system;

reducing the time and cost for preparing new reports;;

improving the efficiency and pictorial presentation of analytical information for management decision-making;

transparency increase in the algorithms used by employees for reporting and analysis.

Implemented modules:

A detailed analysis of the orders and payments from the company's customers;

Solution
With the help of BI Consult experts «Lensmaster" was able to implement an analytical solution on the platform QlikView Business Discovery in the matter of six months, which made it possible to combine the data received from various systems, creating a single information field for management decision-making and further development of the company.

SOLUTION OVERVIEW

The advantages

short implementation time and the results;

new opportunities for analytics,

administrative and financial data intergration;

solution scalability without loss of data processing speed.

Date of the first business results acquisition

In just one week after the start of QlikView implementation, «Lensmaster" had the opportunity to conduct sales analysis and audit.

"Using QlikView empowers the company's management and its employees, speeds up the process of getting the information needed to respond quickly to market demands, which is very important for any business, existing in a highly competitive environment. For "Lensmaster" with its large geographically distributed platform QlikView Business Discovery is an ideal solution to keep an eye on things and make decisions based on the situation in all the regions of its presence "- says Sergey Gromov, CEO of BI Consult

PROJECT BACKGROUND/ REFERENCE POINT

Management of geographically distributed structure is a complex process that requires more attention from the management and the analysis of large amounts of information from various sources. The company "Lensmaster" has an active regional expansion, and the availability of accurate and timely information was vital to its development, which is possible only with the use of a business intelligence system that can help make better and more informed decisions, taking into account current trends in the development of the company and the market in general.

With the decision on the need to implement data analysis in "Lensmaster", data analysis tools were used. However, the acquisition and processing of the data from these systems in companies came across many problems, which significantly complicated the work. Among the most important issues are the following:

long development time of new reports;

high cost of developing new reports;

the need of several experts working on the development (one for ETL, the other for the cubes / data models, the third one for visualization, etc.);

lack of efficiency and visialization of analytical information for management decision-making;

insufficient level of detail;

fragmentation of the same data in different information systems;

lack of transparency in the algorithms used by employees for reporting and analysis.

"The volume of data from our regional offices, were just enormous and increasing with the expansion of our distribution network, - says Sergey Pozdnovsky. - To simplify and speed up the processing of these data, we needed a system that would allow us to quickly create reports, and would be easy in operation and scaling to satisfy the needs of a rapidly growing business. "

FOUNDATION FOR DEVELOPMENT / IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROJECT

"Lensmaster"'s implementation project partner was the St. Petersburg consulting company BI Consult. "When choosing a partner for us it was important to have experts in-depth knowledge of the company and retail industry experience with international companies, which include our company, - said Sergey Pozdnovsky, head of "Lensmaster"'s internal audit" - After meeting with representatives of the BI Consult we realized that this company could not only offer us an industry solution of required functionality, but also provide us with the professionals with vast experience in the production and organization of analysts at large companies. "

As a solution, that met the requirements of "Lensmaster», BI Consult proposed platform QlikView Business Discovery. The project for its implementation started in January 2012 and took place in three stages.

Now this solutions is used by 30 employees in the company's central office. The main source of data for the system was Oracle EBS, MS Excel tables, also the information comes from Oracle's data warehouse , where data is sent to from POS-terminals. During the implementation of the project, some transactional data on the company's activity in the recent 3 years was downloaded into the system.

As a result, "Lensmaster" got tools for the analysis of sales in different sections (markets, regions, stores, groups, brands, managers, channels, stores, etc.), a detailed analysis of the checks on the amounts, days of the week and time of the day with an option to obtain transactional details. In addition, the solution makes it possible to analyze the timing and efficiency of execution of orders, the effectiveness of the shares, the application of discounts, coupons and certificates, conduct geographic analysis indicators, temporal analysis of the effectiveness of stores.

Using QlikView, the company's accounting department is able to analyze the effectiveness of customer's payments and the productivity of work time in the field, timeliness and completeness of data in the POS-terminals and correct communication between the accounting systems of the company. Also, QlikView functional records revenue from several types of recognition to identify discrepancies in the data for internal and external audits. In addition, the accounting department receives analytical data for the calculation of premiums and bonuses to employees and for identifying anomalies, errors or suspicious situations.

PROJECT RESULTS

One of the most important results of QlikView implementation in "Lensmaster" was the management decision-making based on data analysis of the audit, which made it possible to change some of the rules in the company and quickly find suspicious situations. The time-frame in which top managers were able to obtain necessary information, decreased by 60-70%. That is a dramatic increase in the speed of decision-making. Employees are given the opportunity to work in a normal mode in the system with the help of mobile devices (iPad, etc.).

Using QlikView has led to a reduction in the timing of the audit while increasing the effectiveness of the audit, and the number of suspicious and error situations was reduced to a minimum. If before the external audit was detecting errors, now most of the problems are detected inside of the company, resulting in substantial savings in the cost of an external audit.

In the course of the project, errors in the algorithms of data storage were eliminated and the level of detail of analytical information was increased to the lower level, which has led to an increase in the efficiency of the user's work with information received. As a result, it became possible to reduce the development time of various reports by 75-80%, and the accounting period was closing in one day instead of two weeks which were required before.

CONTRIBUTION TO THE FUTURE

«QlikView is a very flexible solution that meets all the needs of our company. With this project, we have a system that currently not only facilitates the management of a network of stores, but also becomes the foundation for the development of business in the future ", - says Sergey Pozdnovsky, head of Lensmaster's internal audit.

"Lensmaster" does not intend to rest on its laurels. A plan for the further development of BI-systems and even the first steps in this direction are already made. The priority tasks are to create tools for the management of the company and bring accountability to the international standards (IFRS, GAAP), which is particularly important for the company as part of an international holding company. Also, we are working on the transfer of warehouse and logistics analysts into QlikView with new opportunities and planning on expanding the old ones. Completion of this process is scheduled for the end of 2012.

In 2013,in partnership with BI Consult "Lensmaster" intends to make a connection to the financial system Microsoft Dynamics NAV. Among the future plans of the organization, are the abilities to provide the analytical capabilities to the managers of shops with the help of QlikView, as well as the resolving of internal audit tasks.